Love, Sex and Other Foreign Policy Goals

Only the very best books get the ‘Books Worth Staring At’ sticker, and here’s the latest to achieve this…

The book: Love, Sex and Other Foreign Policy Goals by Jesse Armstrong

Published: 2015, by Jonathan Cape

Why we loved it: Most of have done stupid things whilst trying to impress someone of the opposite sex, but not all of us would travel to war-torn Bosnia to put on a ‘peace play’. That is the conceit of Jesse ‘Peep Show’ Armstrong’s brilliant debut novel as Andrew, deeply smitten with posh Penny (but not so much her posh friends), leaves it all behind to travel into the unknown in the pursuit of love.

As with Mark from Peep Show, Andrew is often crippled with self-loathing and the inability to know how to act around people, and some of the funniest moments in the book come from his panicked monologues. When he does interact with the rest of the play gang and the various mercenaries they encounter along the way, the dialogue sparks, and this is just crying out for a feature film with Chris Morris or Armando Iannucci at the helm. Highly recommended.